In a world where the importance of content marketing is rapidly growing, marketers must beware of the 7 deadly sins…

You only need to be on social media if your customers are on social media. FALSE!

You don’t have to be on every social network, but you should be on the ones that will help grow your business. Your current customers may not be on social media, but chances are your future customers will be if you have a strong inbound marketing strategy.

Want more exposure on Twitter? Use as many hashtags as you can fit. FALSE!

Less is more. Tweets with only one or two hashtags receive 21% higher engagement than tweets with three or more hashtags.

You don’t need to be on Pinterest unless you’re a B2C brand that sells food or clothing. FALSE!

Inspired by my current marketing class, I was looking around for and engaging marketing blogs. And boy did I find one! Violeta Nedkova has a great blog about marketing tools, creative process and all sorts of other topics.

Her most recent blog “Oh hey! You’re a fun, creative person. But why is your brand so dull?” is about conveying personal brand through web sites, but it can apply to many aspects of brand as well. She focuses on “authenticity” and asks some probing questions about how the expectations of others influence the image (or brand) you put forth to the world. I really loved this part because there are some very inauthentic people, who are constantly talking about “authenticity.” Nedkova really delves deeper to get your personal brand in focus, which links a company or person’s brand to the bigger strategy of finding a sustainable differentiation of the company.